Southport Inquiry to focus on 'violence-fixated individuals'

The chairman of the public inquiry into the Southport attack has promised that his team will do everything they can to prevent future atrocities.

Opening the inquiry's second phase, Sir Adrian Fulford said society was "confronted with a growing challenge from "violence-fixated individuals", who "all too often are not acting out of an adherence to a particular ideology".

He said his inquiry would use evidence sessions, seminars and questionnaires, as well as examine six case studies, to identify possible responses to the dangers they pose.

The inquiry was set up after Bebe King, Elsie Dot Stancombe and Alice da Silva Aguiar were murdered at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class on 29 July 2024.

Sir Adrian has already found there were "catastrophic" failures by various agencies before the Southport attack and said it could have been prevented.

The effectiveness of current laws and the regulation of the sale of knives will also come under scrutiny during the hearings.

Knifeman Axel Rudakubana also seriously wounded eight other children and two adults and left many other children with lasting psychological injuries.

He is serving a minimum prison sentence of 52 years for the murders and attempted murders.

The case studies that the inquiry will shortly examine include a young man who killed three members of his family and planned to attack a primary school, a teenager who fatally stabbed a 12-year-old boy, a man who randomly murdered two women, and a licensed shotgun owner who killed his mother and four other people.

Sir Adrian said: "We must now, with the greatest care but also at speed, do all we can to prevent a repetition of the events in Southport two years ago which were, tragically, wholly avoidable.

"We are confronted with a growing challenge from violence-fixated individuals, who all too often are not acting out of an adherence to a particular ideology.

"Instead, the reasons for their interest in violence is various and as a consequence they can be extremely difficult to identify.

"All too often they will be acting entirely alone, having spent endless hours in solitude, relentlessly online."

He said the evidence sessions would take place in September, October and November. If necessary, further sessions will be arranged in December.

Sir Adrian released a report in April following nine weeks of hearings during the first phase of the inquiry at Liverpool Town Hall.

He concluded Rudakubana had "clearly revealed" he was an extreme danger and his attack "could and should have been prevented" if his parents had "done what they morally ought to have done", or if appropriate arrangements had been put in place by agencies to address his risk.

In his 763-page report, setting out 67 recommendations, Sir Adrian said there was a "fundamental failure" by any organisation, or multi-agency arrangement, to take ownership of the risk posed by the teenager.

Last week, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood gave the government's formal response to the inquiry, accepting the report's recommendations and promising to do "whatever is needed to protect the public".

She said: "The perpetrator came into contact with the state on countless occasions in the years leading up to the attack.

"Failures in both systems and culture meant multiple opportunities were missed to stop this atrocity.

"That is unacceptable. I am clear that the inquiry must act as a turning point."

Families of the girls and other survivors said they needed to see more evidence of action and that no-one had lost their jobs over the failures.

Counsel to the inquiry Nicholas Moss KC said the purpose of its second phase was "to make effective and pragmatic recommendations to minimise the risk of any repeat of such an unimaginably dreadful attack".

He said he understood the importance that the victims and their families put on "effective and speedy implementation" of the inquiry's recommendations - the need for "real, tangible change".

The inquiry team has sent questionnaires to child and adolescent mental health services, the multi-agency public protection teams known as MAPPA and chairs of the Channel teams that are part of the government's anti-extremism programme Prevent.

The questionnaires ask about the prevalence of violence-fixated individuals and how they are handled.

There will be seminars on psychiatry and psychology, the Prevent programme, the internet, offensive weapons, the effectiveness of current laws, and other kinds of risk management, including how it is done overseas in places such as the Netherlands.

Sir Adrian said part of this phase of the inquiry would consider the adverse influence of the online world, which he said was of deep concern to him.